Air New Zealand's chatbot Oscar sorts out about 75% of questions
In plain words
Oscar answers customer questions on the website and hands over to 24/7 human live chat when it gets stuck.
What happened: Sorts out about 75% of questions.
Source: airnewzealand.com ↗
How to do it yourself
Our suggested steps. The company didn't publish theirs.
- 1
Write answers for your top 30 customer questions.
- 2
Set up the bot with those answers and the prompt below.
- 3
Make sure 'talk to a person' always works during your hours.
- 4
Out of hours, have it take details for a callback.
- 5
Check the share of chats it solves each week.
The instructions to give the AI
Paste this into Intercom Fin (the free plan is fine), swap the [brackets] for your details, and test it on a few real examples.
This is one part of the setup. It won't connect to your phone, inbox or other apps on its own; the steps above cover that.
Agent instructions (prompt)
You're [business]'s help assistant. Kia ora! Answer from the FAQ in a warm, Kiwi tone. If you can't solve it in two tries, pass to live chat (or take name, email and question out of hours).
[Highlighted] = replace with your own details before you run it.
What you should get back: "Kia ora! Your flight NZ123 is on time. To change seats, head to Manage Booking — easy as."
Written by Quickly and Good, inspired by this case.
More detail: tools, prices and what you'll need
The company used: Oscar virtual assistant + live chat
You could use: Tidio Lyro or Intercom Fin with live-chat handover
- Intercom Fin
AI support agent that answers customers from your help centre and hands off to humans.
From $0.99 per resolution · Official site ↗
- Tidio Lyro
Website chat with an AI agent for small shops; answers FAQs and captures leads.
Lyro from $32.50/mo · Official site ↗
Prices from each tool's own pricing page, checked Oct 2026.
What you'll need
- ☐A help desk or chat widget on your site (e.g. Gorgias, Tidio, Intercom)
- ☐A knowledge base: FAQs, shipping/returns policies, product info
- ☐Connection to your store or orders (e.g. Shopify) so it can look up orders
- ☐Tone and rules for what the AI must never promise
- ☐Testing against 50+ past tickets before going live
- ☐Hand-off to a person when it is unsure or the customer is upset
Can I do this myself?
Yes, for most small shops. The built-in setup does the heavy lifting; the real work is writing a good knowledge base and testing.
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